


Safehand Lessons

by dragoninatrenchcoat



Category: Cosmere - Brandon Sanderson, Stormlight Archive - Brandon Sanderson
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Cosmere Tumblr RP, Dalinavani, F/M, Kharbranth University, Safehand
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-05
Updated: 2015-08-05
Packaged: 2018-04-20 15:24:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4792592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragoninatrenchcoat/pseuds/dragoninatrenchcoat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dalinar, the Dean of Students at Kharbranth University, needs to figure out how to be alright with women from other cultures who don't use the safehand glove. Luckily, Navani is there to show him the way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Safehand Lessons

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place in the [Cosmere Tumblr RP](http://cosmererp.tumblr.com).

Navani closed and locked the door behind her.

The office was small; the Dean of Students didn’t need very much room, just a desk and a soft couch in case a couple of students wanted to come in and talk. There were a few bookshelves, and there were a few books on them; Dalinar had learned to read several years ago, but it still felt uncomfortable to keep too many books nearby–and, aside from using a computer, he really just preferred Navani to read to him. (And sometimes even then.)

Dalinar turned and frowned, turning his back on the sun shining in from the fourth-floor window. Navani smiled in return. The sunlight reflecting from the small gemstones set into her hair dazzled almost half as well as the woman herself, her eyes gleaming as she smiled back at him.

“I don’t know if now is the time,” he said uncertainly, looking between her and the door, but she started shaking her head as she approached him.

“I just wanted a little privacy,” she told him. “Jasnah has told me you feel uncomfortable seeing exposed safehands around campus.”

He blinked, surprised by the subject change. “Well, I suppose. It’s just a cultural adjustment I have to make.” Dalinar looked into her eyes. They always drew him in when Navani was close, shining like the sun at the end of a Weeping, and she had kept walking until they were very close indeed. “Why?”

At that, Navani unbuttoned her safehand sleeve and drew out her hand, holding it up between them.

Of course her safehand was beautiful. All of her was beautiful. Her skin was soft, her fingers long and delicate, slender, smooth. Nearly by instinct alone, Dalinar reached up and took her hand in his. He ran his thumb over the back of it, brought it close and kissed it–this beautiful part of Navani, gorgeous and sacred like the rest of her.

She sharply withdrew the hand from his grasp, causing him to start a little.

“That’s your problem,” she told him. “You’ve never seen a bare safehand but in intimate situations.”

“Of course I haven’t.” Dalinar blinked at her. “I’ve never been outside of Roshar before I took this post.”

Navani reached across and held his left hand with hers, holding it up between them again. He interlocked their fingers and she met his eyes, that look in them that she had when she knew she had the right formula. He loved her intellect, how swiftly her mind moved, but what exactly could she be studying right now?

“You men don’t need to cover your left hand. What’s the difference between your left hand and mine?” she asked him.

He looked at the two hands, twined as they were between them. Again, he ran his thumb over the back of her delicate safehand. “Yours isn’t made for work,” he offered, as more of a suggestion than an answer.

“It is just as made for work as my other,” she answered. “Try again.”

“Well- I don’t know,” he gave up. “What’s the difference between your  _chest_  and mine?”

At that, however, Navani smiled, and for a moment he was worried that she was about to completely disrobe before him and that open window. But all she did was say, “Jasnah would ask that same question.”

That made Dalinar a touch uncomfortable. “Why do you keep bringing up your daughter in this situation?”

Navani laughed. “There’s nothing untoward  _about_  this situation,” she told him, her laughter lovelier than the melodies from any harp. “It’s just a  _hand_ , Dalinar.”

“It’s a  _safehand_ ,” he protested.

She untwined their hands then and backed up a few steps. With her right hand, she roughly rolled up her safehand sleeve nearly to the elbow–and then, with her safehand, she rolled up her freehand sleeve to the same point. Then she held both of her hands toward him.

“Show me the difference between my hands,” Navani told him. “One of them I’m supposed to cover up, and one of them I’m allowed to bare in public. Point me to the reason why.”

“I know they’re identical, Navani.”

“Oh?” She blinked at him, her eyebrows raised. “It’s all set, then. I’m off. Thank you for your time.” She turned around and unlocked the door.

“Wait!” Dalinar took a step forward, his hand toward her, even though he knew she was only teasing him.

Navani hesitated, her freehand on the doorknob, her safehand hanging bare and slender at her side, and glanced back at him with a smile. “Is there a problem?”

She was daring him to tell her to button her sleeve. He stepped toward her and spoke a little softly. “For the students, Navani, the ones from other lands–they don’t know any better. You-”

“Don’t know any better?” she cut him off, one eyebrow raised. “You’re implying now that Vorinism is the only truth?”

Dalinar snapped his mouth shut at her interruption. “I misspoke. I only meant-”

“You only meant that  _you_  don’t know any better.” She locked the door again. “You and I both know that the Almighty is dead.”

He hesitated, looking into her stunning eyes. “What does that have to do with this?”

“What the ardents have been telling us from the very beginning may well be wrong,” she said with a shrug. “Written by men, rather than the Almighty. Certainly caretaken by men since the Almighty’s death.”

“You’ve been speaking with Jasnah.”

Navani’s smile at that was one that a mother might make to a child asking after the blatantly obvious. “ _Now_  who’s talking about my daughter? Of course I have been. But famous heretics aside, Dalinar, it’s only logic. Why do we follow these social rules?”

“Because-” he stopped himself.  _It’s the Ardentia_ , he’d wanted to say.  _It’s the way of things._  But didn’t Navani just tell him that the Ardentia may well be speaking words that men have written? How long has the Almighty been dead?

Her smile grew the longer he stood stumped.

“Even if you don’t agree with them, Navani, it’s not something you can just throw aside.”

“Why not?” she asked him, her chin up, looking him right in the eye–and, consequently, right in the heart. Storms, he wanted to kiss her. She became more beautiful the more clever she acted, and her eyes were sharp and discerning as ever. “We’re in a unique situation, Dalinar. Kharbranth University isn’t a place beholden to strict Vorin standards.”

“Well, yes,” he agreed, finding that it was impossible to look away from her.

She took his right hand in her right hand then, and held them between herself and Dalinar the same way she’d done with their left hands a moment previous. “Is my freehand less attractive than my safehand?”

“Of course not,” he said immediately.

“Is it  _more_  attractive than my safehand?”

He frowned at her, perplexed. “Where are you going with this, Navani?”

“Perhaps it’s the scholar in me,” she said flippantly, “but I would argue that a woman’s freehand is infinitely more attractive than her safehand. What is a woman, Dalinar, other than the work she does? The art she paints, the ledgers she scribes, the plans she draws?”

He looked at her freehand again, held before him still, as he listened to her.

“The safehand is a perfect duplicate of the freehand, but it doesn’t perform any of the fantastic works a woman does. It remains hidden beneath fabric, never developing any useful skills other than holding onto a hidden pouch of spheres. The freehand, Dalinar, is precisely the same as the safehand.” At this, she took his right hand in her safehand as well, holding his between them. From this angle, with her two little fingers brushing against each other on the near side of his hand, the fact that there was no difference at all between them was made all the more obvious. “Except that the freehand is the conduit through which the woman does her works. Isn’t an intelligent woman far more attractive than one who does nothing?”

“Of course,” Dalinar answered, if only because it felt like it was required of him.

“Then why wouldn’t you find the more intelligent hand to be more attractive?”

He brought up his left hand and placed it around her right, then bent down and kissed the fingers of her freehand. “All of you is beautiful, Navani.”

She smiled at that, a sweet smile that told him that she believed him. Then she said, “Close your eyes.”

Dalinar nodded and closed his eyes, holding her freehand between his and feeling her safehand against the back of his right.

“You’ve seen women wearing safehand gloves, haven’t you?”

He nodded again, picturing a darkeyed woman with a black glove on her left hand. He didn’t know who she was, or if his mind simply conjured up an idea of a woman, but she had long black hair and wore a simple dress. Her glove came all the way up under the sleeve of her dress, covering her wrist.

“Have you seen women wearing gloves on their freehands as well?”

He pictured the darkeyed woman with a matching black glove on her freehand. “Yes,” he answered her. “Darkeyed women. Lighteyed women always use the sleeve, so the glove on their freehand doesn’t seem as…”

“I want you to picture something for me,” Navani said then, one of her thumbs running lightly over the side of his hand. “Picture me, wearing two matching gloves.”

Simple enough to do. He saw her at work, with the safehand glove she liked to use. Brilliant in the glowing spherelight, her concentrated face illuminated by the fabrial she was putting together. He pictured her freehand in the same type of glove.

“My hands match, don’t they? Is that strange?”

“Perhaps,” he answered. “It’s a little odd.”

“Now picture me with neither glove on.”

It was a silly thing, Navani at work with her safehand exposed. But he could see where she was going with this: if it was only a little odd with her glove-covered hands matching, why is it so odd with them matching bare?

“Now picture a man at work,” Navani continued.

Dalinar frowned. “Alright,” he said, and thought of Sadeas teaching a class.

“Imagine that man working with a glove on his left hand, but not his right.”

Sadeas pointing to the board with a gloved safehand. The thought was absurd, to say the least.

“It’s funny, isn’t it?” Navani asked. “But really, there is no difference between a woman’s left hand and a man’s. There is no quantifiable reason, beyond Vorinism, so objectify a woman’s left hand at all.”

He opened his eyes and looked at her, splendid in the sunlight. “I suppose that makes sense,” he agreed. “But that doesn’t mean I’m immediately comfortable seeing it everywhere.”

This time, Navani’s smile was that of a scientist just ready to test her hypothesis. “That’s where I come in.”

“You?” Dalinar asked, confused.

“Me.” She released his hands, leaving him to feel like he was missing something, before wiggling the fingers of both bare hands at him. Despite what she’d said, he wanted to press her safehand against his cheek, kiss it, kiss  _her_. Almighty above, he wanted to kiss her.

“I’ll train you,” she explained. “We’ll make a list of all the everyday things people do around campus, and I’ll do them, right here, in a Scadrialan jacket with both sleeves even.”

“Is that really necessary?”

“You’re the Dean of Students,” she reminded him. “It would hardly be appropriate for you to have to try so hard not to look students in the safehand when you talk to them.”

He had to smile at that. “I suppose you’re right,” he said. Then he put one hand on her shoulder and examined her face, her gorgeous light eyes, her perfect lips.

“Well, then, before we begin,” he continued, “I’m afraid there’s one thing I need to do.”

“Oh? What’s that?” Navani asked, looking between his eyes, a slight smile playing on her lips.

As a reply, Dalinar leaned over and kissed her.


End file.
